The introduction of rolled steel and reinforced concrete
(both approximately 100 years ago), then plate glass,
new forms of factory processed (i.e., laminated) wood,
and most recently, plastics, has revolutionized man's
building means. Moreover, when one demands totally
fresh building types--skyscrapers, large hospitals, com-
munity halls, housing projects, expansive schools, indus-
trial plants, and not forgetting that terror, the automo-
bile, garages and suspension bridges--the result will
inescapably and logically produce a new architecture.
Furthermore, this has been and is being colored by a
newly egalitarian society, one assailed by changes more
profound and rapid than ever before in history.

Europe gave the world this new architecture. And
Europe, with its manifold geographical, cultural, ma-
terial, and national variations, has taken it to its most
protean and significant heights.

This book has been written for those who, not satis-
fied with viewing aged masterpieces only, would like to
examine personally the provocative postwar architectural
achievements of Europe.

While it is unquestionably true that the United States
can muster a greater number of significant postwar
buildings--the word "postwar" must be underlined--than
any single country elsewhere, there are few building
types in the U.S. which are not surpassed in excellence by
European examples. Indeed, excepting the contributions
of our own pioneer genius, the late Frank Lloyd Wright
(himself a powerful influence on European building),
the present advanced state of U.S. architecture can be
traced directly to the influx here of extraordinarily tal-
ented architects from the Continent, and to the influence
of their pioneering, teaching, and achievement.

Strangely enough it is in large-scale thinking and large-
scale construction techniques that the "small" countries
of Europe almost invariably surpass us. The United
States has, for instance, no housing authority that can
touch the scope and quality of work being done in Lon-
don or Stockholm, while American industrial planning
is--in the factory-housing-community sense--embryonic

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